Memorials

The tombstone in Malmesbury Abbey Church Yard is not the same one that stood there in 1966. I say this having studied a photograph I took then and compared it to one I took more recently, showing slightly differing font and word spacing. It is known since 1966 that the present one was once cleaned by John Bowen because the lichens had almost rendered the inscription illegible. Since that cleaning, the stone has once again become very difficult to read. As the tombstone may very well not be the original, many, many, other stones in the church yard over the years having split and crumbled due to weathering and have at various times been removed and scrapped, so then the original stone could have met the same fate. Most of the stones were never replace and the church yard has now many fewer stones than can be seen in many old photographs. The few remaining stones are all about 100-200 years younger than the date of Hannah’s death in 1703. My opinion is it is quite likely, if the Hannah story is true, and there was an original tombstone, then it could very well have deteriorated to the state where a replica was created and this may have been repeated since. The Abbey does have records of all the plots and who was buried in them, it’s possible then that there may still exist a record of Hannah Twynnoy’s tombstone, having been replaced at sometime in its history. I also failed to find any record of anyone else with the surname of Twynnoy and it has also been determined that any existence of any records of Hannah herself can no longer be traced anywhere, unless at some point in the future someone turns something up.